Monday, January 23, 2012

Fit 8, pg. 79/1 … the memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a snark in his prime

My Newt Gingrich illo (see last posting below) possessed so much mojo that this Snark illo of mine is probably going to break the internets. Sure, to some people it's just a picture of the Fellowship of the Snark girding their loins for the heavy-going of Fit the Eighth but to some other people it's voodoo of the highest order.

These other people know that the verse quoted here is actually an Anglo-Saxon galdor, cunningly disguised as the refrain of the Victorian era's only genuine, certifiable verse epic, The Hunting of the Snark. Its author, the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, devised this Fit as a cunning disguise for a particularly violent dénouement of his literary protagonist, the Baker, who was himself a cunning disguise for Lewis Carroll, the well-known cunning disguise of the good Reverend.

None of this matters much to modern readers (particularly American ones), some of whom seem to have difficulty remembering that only a few years ago, Newt Gingrich announced that “the idea that a congressman would be tainted by accepting money from private industry or private sources is essentially a socialist argument.”

Substitute the word "congressman" with the word "illustrator" and the above drawing quickly becomes an inevitable reality, spawned by the unholy conjunction of this illustrator's Snark and a small bit of private industry known as Melville House. Doubtful readers can test the veracity of this statement by purchasing a copy of our Snark GN and seeing how tainted this illustrator feels afterwards … none at all, I can assure you.

Thimble, care, fork, hope … the fetish objects of a political cargo cult which roams the post-postmodern halls of power, charming the pants off the American electorate with mere smiles and soap.

NB. This elective affinity for Newt springs from the basest of motives, I can assure you … a long-ago, half-remembered encounter at the AEI during yet another one of those fruitless, inane job interviews which blighted this artist's salad days … which brings us (finally) to this: